Life and Its Channels by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Feb 21, 1906

Life and Its Channels.

By Editor

In an article in another column entitled "Our Source of Energy, or Life," which is worthy of thoughtful reading, is this sentence, "But all power comes from the same source;" and this is true, but it does not come through the same channel. The life question in our minds will never be understood or truly grasped until we recognize that man is under a twofold law, physical and spiritual. We see evidence of this life around us on every side. Life through one current makes a vegetable, through another an animal. He who has no faith in God whatsoever, who lives in harmony with the laws of his physical being, has a plenitude of health, speaking after the manner of this fallen world. He appropriates the energy which God has placed in food, in water, in air. He is strong physically, but he has no spiritual life, he has "no hope," and "is without God in the world," "alienated from the life of God," as expressed by the apostle.

In the words of our Saviour, he has not come to Him that he may have life. Over and over it is stated in the Gospel of John that those who do not have faith in Christ are cut off from the life which the spiritual man has. They live the life of the flesh, and are dominated by its influence.

On the other hand we see a poor sick soul with no physical power and energy, and no strength of body to appropriate the life stored in the food, and yet he is filled with spiritual life. Faith has opened the soul to God; and as the trolley arm connects with the live wire overhead and makes the living car, so faith has opened the channel of communication between the soul and God, and the spiritual life through His Word and the ministration of angelic beings, and His great omnipresent Spirit flows in and restores the soul. But what God wants is that there shall be so much of this life that it will be all-controlling, dominating not only the soul, but also the flesh, purifying the very life of the flesh, so that the child of God shall receive all his life, both through spiritual channels and physical, as from the Father. And this we understand the article to teach.